


Decima

by halotolerant



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Angst, Celebrations, Lack of Communication, M/M, Polyamorous Character, Roland Garros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 17:22:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11235684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: La Coupe des Mousquetairesis sitting on the low glass coffee table in the middle of the hotel suite. The reflections in the table’s surface multiply and gleam, silver light streaming out. It’s just another shiny thing in a room full of them, if you think about it that way.





	Decima

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bishybarnaby (norfolkdumpling)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/norfolkdumpling/gifts).



> Rafa won 10 Roland Garros titles a while back. They gave him a special individual trophy to mark the occasion. I and my filthy mind INVENTED THE REST FOR SOME REASON, I BLAME THE HEAT

_La Coupe des Mousquetaires_ is sitting on the low glass coffee table in the middle of the hotel suite. The reflections in the table’s surface multiply and gleam, silver light streaming out. It’s just another shiny thing in a room full of them, if you think about it that way.

 

And yet for it Rafa has tried harder than maybe for anything else in life.

 

When the knock comes at the door, Rafa startles a bit. He’s not quite sure how long he’s been sitting on the sofa, just gazing.

 

Long enough that the creamy leather under his legs had warmed, and that the cooler material coming into contact when he moved strikes him, grounding him back to this, here, now.

 

He’d been somewhere in 2005 – somewhere twelve years ago, how it that twelve years ago, how did he ever get old enough that ‘twelve years ago’ includes some part of his career?

 

The door – he stands up, and winces a little, and puts a hand to the side of his knee, and rubs.

 

It can feel like longer than twelve years too, of course, sometimes.

 

Twelve years ago they’d handed him this cup, and he’d taken it in hands streaked with red earth and sweat and he’d cried. He can remember not knowing why he was crying when he was _happy_. He’d been happy, so very, very happy and he can remember thinking it felt like the ending of a computer game, when the starburst comes over the screen to say congrats, well done, that’s done, that’s over, here are some animation credits.

 

But that was twelve years ago, and it hadn’t been over at all.

 

He opens the door a crack. He wants to know who it is, first. It’s become usual for the team to leave him alone, just for a bit, nights like this – the night after the night after. They’ve done their partying and drinking and social media, and after that he likes to just…. Be alive. Be having the moment. He doesn’t want to interrupt that unless it’s something important.

 

It would appear that the person on the other side of the door is Roger Federer.

 

In fact, that’s sufficiently important that Rafa actually can’t move for a few seconds or minutes or possibly hours – he’s stuck, face in the door, staring. Mouth drying up. Ideas readjusting.

 

He could be dreaming this. He spends so much time in the maze of his own mind constructing things that could happen or might or might possibly or might never…

 

“Hey there,” Roger says, and grins that smile that he has like he _knows_ he’s always welcome, by everyone, everywhere.

 

“You are in Switzerland,” Rafa tells him, because as sure as Roger is suave, Rafa is… not.

 

Roger is still grinning. He raises an eyebrow. “And yet…” And he raises his arm - just touching the door that Rafa’s still gripping like it’s all that’s keeping him upright. There’s a question in his face now – as if he didn’t know the answer.

 

Rafa stumbles backwards, tries to regroup.

 

There had been things he was going to say, and do, the next time he was alone with Roger. There had been carefully planned comments and deeply considered observations, and very precise off-hand statements.

 

Rafa takes another step backwards. “I won,” he hears himself reporting.

 

“I know.” Roger’s voice is pretty husky. The grin on his face is like a cat’s.

 

“Are you…” Rafa licks his lips, catches Roger watching him, flushes. He’s only wearing his shorts and suddenly he’s conscious of it in a way he’d forgotten to be before.

 

There’s a silence, and what feels like a cool breeze from somewhere – anyway, Rafa’s nipples are tightening and they can both see that. It feels like the flush is going down his chest too. He feels hot all over, a sheen of sweat rising quickly as it always does.

 

Roger’s in an immaculate suit, because Roger. Rafa wonders briefly what excuse he gave his air-taxi pilot. Or did he brazen it out. Just say what he was coming to Paris to do and laugh, and expect everyone to take it as a joke?

 

If Roger is here for the reason Rafa thinks. Hopes. Fears.

 

Hopes.

 

Twelve years later and it might as well be 2005. Rafa still wants the same things he did then. Just as much, maybe more.

 

“It’s very shiny,” Roger observes, casting a glance at the table, and Rafa can’t help smiling, proud, pleased to be praised.

 

“That is not the real one,” Rafa points out, truthfully.

 

“It’s a special one, though, isn’t it?” Roger’s closed the distance between them somewhere along the way. He’s very near to Rafa now, and he smells of his expensive aftershave and aircraft aircon and the Paris night. He’s been chewing spearmint gum in his taxi.

 

Rafa can feel the skin across his stomach and between his legs heat and tighten from that scent alone.

 

“A special one,” Roger is continuing. “A perfect replica, solid silver, for you. Just for you. Ten wins. _Decima._ Ten times a champion.”

 

A reporter had once asked Rafa if winning again and again made him want the trophy less. He’d laughed at the question, but eventually, thinking it over, he’d seen what she might have meant – that having it might devalue it for him, that the eighth or ninth or tenth time might not be as special as the first or second or third.

 

But with every new time, it’s more likely that it’s the last – that’s what he should have told her. That’s what makes it worse and worse, the wanting, the needing, the dreaming, the planning.

 

He takes a step closer to Roger, in his turn, and rolls his shoulders back, tilting his head slightly, waiting, ready, open.

 

Roger knows he’s wanted here as much if not perhaps more than in any other place on Earth. Rafa’s not even going to try and dispute it.

 

“Rafa,” Roger murmurs, satisfied, happy, and takes his mouth the way Rafa hoped he would, with heavy, demanding kisses and his tongue piercing, possessing, heartbreakingly erotic.

 

Rafa slides his hands slowly up Roger’s back, under the suit jacket, feeling warm skin and brand new silk against his callouses. Wants to dig his nails in until Roger pants with it.

 

(They’ve done that, before. Rafa’s done that, taken his frustration out on Roger’s body, and the worst part was that Roger seemed to like it and then neither of them had had a clue what to do with that and that had preceded one of their longest dry spells in all their years doing or not doing whatever this is or isn’t)

 

“What’s happening?” Rafa asks instead, into the bend of Roger’s neck, nose half-buried in Roger’s hair. He’s not really expecting an answer – after all, he doesn’t usually get one.

 

This isn’t the time in their careers to make waves – and the kind of waves two megastars of men’s sport coming out would produce tower high enough to haunt Rafa’s nightmares. This isn’t the time in their careers to make solid plans for afterwards. This isn’t the time in their careers that is ‘afterwards’, not quite yet, not just now, even though for spans of months either of them can be hovering perilously close.

 

Such runs Roger’s reasoning, and Rafa can come up with so many millions of scenarios in his own head about this and pretty much every other aspect of his life that he’s prepared to accept that maybe it’s better not to think of any. To live each moment, in each moment, and have this – the two of them, like this, not defined any further beyond that – just randomly as it happens, and try not to worry about if, when and how it will ever happen again.

 

“If you have to ask,” Roger murmurs back, chuckling, misunderstanding, “I’m not doing it right.”

 

 _No, you’re not,_ Rafa doesn’t say, just hides his face a little longer where Roger cannot see, and breathes, and shakes a little. It catches him at odd times, after, the emotion of winning, and Roger knows that, and will think nothing of this.

 

Sometimes he can feel like Roger knows nothing about him, not really, and sometimes it’s like Roger is the only person who understands him and the only one who ever will.

 

“We’re celebrating,” Roger continues, and his hands come to gently guide Rafa’s head back so he can be kissed again. Spearmint and a cup of coffee a while back, and maybe somewhere some lingering hint of Mirka’s lipstick.

 

Mirka will know, Mirka always knows, always seems calm about it, always has. Rafa doesn’t get how that works, although he’s finally been convinced that it does.

 

It’s like those reflections in the glass-top table, and in the chrome, and in the trophy itself, refracting back twisting and opposite and the same again, over and over, different takes on the same reality, all true at once, even though they might not seem able to co-exist.

 

Maybe Roger does get it, does understand it all. Is navigating effortlessly and easily a course Rafa can’t even see.

 

“Celebrate?” Rafa’s voice breaks on the word; Roger’s got a hand toying with the elastic of his boxers, fingers slipping under. Rafa’s hard, straining the fabric, and Roger is here, close, and nudging back up against him.

 

“You didn’t think I’d be happy for you?” Roger sounds serious now, a little.

 

Rafa makes himself pull away – he needs to see Roger’s eyes when he reassures him.

 

“Sure, I did,” he says. “I just don’t think, you know…” He lifts his hands, strokes his fingers over Roger’s face – crinkly, kind eyes and stupid lovely nose and his lips, his… Roger’s grinning again, already regaining confidence – so easy for Roger, so hideously easy – and sucking Rafa’s fingertips and Rafa feels his cock kick and leak and has to groan.

 

“Roger,” he sighs out, like a confession. And then, on that theme, “Roger, I want….”

 

_I want to know what’s happening. I want to know if how you feel about me has as much to do with winning at tennis as it sometimes seems to. I want to know if this means to you what it does to me. I want to know if this is the last time._

 

“Rafa,” Roger murmurs back, that way he does, the vowels like a roar, _Rah-Fah_ , all long teeth and readiness. “Rafa, Rafa, Rafa, ten times a champion. You know what that cup needs?”

 

And he’s grabbing, angling them, drawing Rafa across the room in his arms until they’re by the table and facing it, their faces in the maze of reflections now, Roger gazing at him in every direction.

 

In some of the angles, Rafa can see exactly what he’s dreaming of, all the things he’s hoped for, right there in Roger’s face. Isn’t there a story about a girl who goes into a looking glass? Could Rafa reach those places, those parts of this reality, if he wanted it enough?

 

“It needs to be…. inscribed properly,” Roger is saying, coughs, voice harsh with lust, breath hot and damp on Rafa’s ear. And he’s got his hand going down in Rafa’s shorts, reaching, fondling, cupping, and Rafa can barely _breathe._

 

“Ten times, Rafa,” Roger’s saying, hand already stroking, angling Rafa towards… towards the _cup_ , he’s going to…. _into the cup…_ “Do you think you can do ten times for me?”

 

Rafa throws his head back, gasping, and tries his very, very best.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
